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There’s something slightly absurd about a marketing agency telling you how to evaluate marketing agencies. So take this with the appropriate pinch of salt — but the advice below is the same advice we’d give a friend, including the parts that don’t flatter us.
The problem you’re facing is that every agency website in Kenya says the same things. Results-driven. Data-led. Passionate about growth. Trusted by hundreds of brands. None of it helps you choose, because all of it is free to say.
Here’s what actually separates them.
First, work out what you need
Before you talk to anyone, answer three questions for yourself:
- What do you want more of? Phone calls, walk-ins, online orders, quote requests. Be specific. “More visibility” is not a goal.
- How do your customers currently find you? Referrals, Instagram, Google, passing trade. That tells you which channel to start with.
- What can you actually spend, every month, for at least six months? Marketing that stops after two months is money thrown away.
Walking into a sales conversation without these means you’ll be sold whatever that agency prefers to sell.
Five claims that should make you cautious
“Guaranteed first-page rankings.” Nobody controls Google’s results. An agency promising a specific position is either misunderstanding how search works or counting on you not to notice when they rank you for a phrase nobody searches.
“Kenya’s number one agency.” Ranked by whom? This is almost always self-awarded.
Countdown timers and “only 3 slots left.” Manufactured urgency on an agency’s own website tells you how they’ll market your business too.
Enormous client numbers. If a Kenyan agency claims thousands of clients, do the arithmetic on how many staff that would require.
No pricing anywhere. Not automatically disqualifying — but if a whole site promises affordability and never shows a number, ask why.
Questions worth asking
Ask these on the first call. What matters is less the answer than whether they answer plainly.
“What would you do in the first month?”
Good: a specific sequence, starting with understanding your business.
Bad: a package name and a price.
“How will we know it’s working?”
Good: enquiries, calls, sales, cost per lead.
Bad: impressions, reach, followers.
“What’s realistic in three months?”
Good: an honest answer that separates paid ads (fast) from SEO (slow).
Bad: a number that sounds impressive.
“Can I speak to a current client?”
Good: yes, here’s someone.
Bad: deflection toward written testimonials only.
“What have you tried that didn’t work?”
This is the best question on the list. Anyone who has run campaigns for real clients has stories about things that failed. An agency that claims everything always works has either never done the job or isn’t being straight with you.
The question almost nobody asks: who owns the accounts?
This is the one that costs businesses the most, and it never comes up until it’s too late.
If an agency runs your Meta or Google Ads campaigns from their business manager rather than an account you own, then when the relationship ends you lose the campaign history, the audience data, the pixel history and the learning the platform has accumulated about your customers. You start from zero somewhere else.
The same applies to your website, your domain, your analytics, and the content produced for you.
Before you sign, confirm in writing:
- Ad accounts are registered in your business name, with the agency added as a user
- Your domain is registered to you, not the agency
- You have administrator access to your own website, analytics and social profiles
- Logos, photography and content produced for you belong to you
- On exit, access transfers within a stated number of days
A good agency will find this a completely normal conversation. Hesitation here tells you everything.
Contract terms to check
Three months is a reasonable minimum — less than that and no channel has had time to prove itself. Six is common. Anything past twelve months without clear performance checkpoints and a way out should give you pause.
Ask what the exit process actually looks like and how much notice you need to give. Get it in writing rather than relying on goodwill.
Agency, freelancer, or in-house?
Not everyone needs an agency. A skilled freelancer is often better value if you need one thing done consistently — social posting, say. The limit is capacity: one person can’t produce content, run ads and analyse performance at scale, and if they’re unavailable, everything stops.
An agency costs more because you’re paying for several specialists and for continuity. That’s worth it when channels need to work together, and harder to justify when you want three posts a week.
We’ve broken the numbers down in our guide to what social media management costs in Kenya, including why hiring in-house is usually more expensive than people assume.
Check them out independently
Three things you can do in ten minutes, without asking permission:
Look at their Google Business Profile. Real reviews from named local businesses are hard to fake. An agency selling you visibility that has no reviews itself is worth a question.
Search for them. If an SEO agency doesn’t appear for its own service terms, that’s informative — though a small, honest agency may simply be newer than the competition, which isn’t the same as being bad at the job.
Look at their own website. Is the copy specific or generic? Are the case studies real, with named clients? Is anything on it obviously placeholder text? How a business treats its own marketing is a reasonable proxy for how it will treat yours.
A note on price
The cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest outcome. Below a certain level, nobody can produce decent work and still pay their people — so corners get cut somewhere you won’t see until later.
Equally, expensive doesn’t mean good. What you want is a clear explanation of what you get for the money, and someone willing to say “that budget won’t achieve that goal” when it’s true.
Where we fit
We’re a small agency in Nairobi working with startups and small businesses. We publish our pricing, we don’t guarantee rankings, and we’ll tell you if your budget isn’t enough to do something useful — because taking the work anyway helps neither of us.
If that’s the sort of conversation you want, request a quote and we’ll give you a straight answer. And if you’d rather use this checklist on someone else, that’s fine too — you’ll make a better decision either way.
